"Videogames have been one of the most exclusive communities i've ever encountered," she said to me via email, "some dudes, like Raph Koster, insist that when he says dys4ia 'isn't a game,' that's not a value judgement. That's bullshit. the attempt to label games like dys4ia as 'non-games,' as 'interactive experiences,' is just an attempt by the status quo to keep the discussion of games centered around the kind of games it's comfortable with—cus if there's one thing existing videogame culture is good at, it's making a certain kind of dude very, very comfortable."

I've noticed a recent uptick in this "certain kind of dude" argument. On the one hand it's about the acceptance and treatment of women, minorities and other groups within the game industry - and rightly so. On the other it's about the perception of patriarchy. It's saying that a "certain kind of dude" oppresses creative people with his view of an industry organised around keeping him happy, and he uses the definition of "game" as an exercise of power.

This assertion is far more contentious because it conflates three different discussions. The first is political and asserts that passivity or apathy are actually forms of complicity. The second is to do with market preference, asking why is it that the white-dude market buys certain kinds of game endlessly while ignoring greater diversity. This point lays the blame at the feet of the industry, whereas the industry maintains that market dynamics are evolutionary and so the industry chases the market rather than dictating to it.

The third discussion is about critique. To many formalists (myself included) many new kinds of interactive art are either not games, or not very good when thought of as games. Many are gamelikes, gamified systems, limited, persuasive, personal interactive stories. Some are virtual worlds. Some are more conceptually interesting than playable. Many are reliant on knowing the author's intent.

In creating a "game" not meant to be played or won, its creator is saying something. To then call that work something other than "game" can seem like an attack directed at its creator. Particularly for the group that could loosely be termed "zinesters", "game" has become a highly charged art-politik battleground that has to be won. Increasingly zinesters have taken to folding formalism into the patriarchy, complicity and "certain kind of dude" debates to paint all with the same broad brush.

Not only is that yet another attempt to win the debate over games through equivocation, it has the effect of dissuading some otherwise-interesting voices from engaging. Some, like Raph, continue to try such as with this open letter in which he discusses the debate and its personal side (an indie developer he respects crossed the street to avoid him at GDC) only to find himself yelled-at once more on Twitter. The question for zinesters is this: Is yellers and name-callers essentially all you are?

Games are belief engines. Games are canvases for stories in motion. Games are a challenge and a learning activity. Games are ideas. Games are explorations both intellectual and meaningful. Games are positive. Games make life better. Games help you feel success when all around you is grey and confusing. Games are change. Games are illuminating. Games are insightful. Games are irreverent. Games are very old. Games are very new. Games are tests. Games are addictive. Games are pressure. Games are motivational, inspirational and educational. Games are fun. Games are exercise. Games are good for body and soul. Games are about you. Games are projections. Games are worlds which we superimpose on this world in order to escape or make sense of it. Games are dynamic, chaotic and delightful. Games are there to be mastered, used up and then forgotten. Games are participatory, cultural and shared. Games are demanding. Games are emotive. Games are sometimes indescribable and yet all too real. Games are made, but more than the sum of their made parts. Games are a constant source of the strange. Games are risky. Games are playful. Games are one of the key experiences that life is for. Games are brilliant. Games are an art form. Games are numinous. Games are thaumatic. Games belong to us.

Perhaps a way of think of games in terms of a larger set of interactive art is as artificial worlds. Like a biome in the Eden Project, each has artificial rules superimposed upon reality in an attempt to craft a place. Each is different, bounded by the systems that give them form, but full of possibility and indviduated experience.

You could call them ludomes, ludic (as in interactive play) biomes. Perhaps that makes us all ludomancers, which makes the URL of Daniel Benmergui's blog oddly apt, no?

Chris Bateman over at iHobo is mid-way through a curious series of posts talking about the value judgements of those who define games. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) this spun out of a debate started on this blog over 'what is a game' that erupted in the wake of Dear Esther. Specifically whether defining something as a game only reflects a critical bias on the part of the definer.

It's complicated, especially when viewed in such lights as the four lenses of game making. Clearly there are many ways that people who hold a belief about what games are, or should be, could conjure a definition of games to fit their own bias as a circular argument. However does that mean that all such attempts are doomed?